A Birthright of Blood (The Dragon War, Book 2)

by Daniel Arenson

  Frey's voice dripped disgust. "Oh, you can go sleep soon, Leresy. You won't be here long. You might not be here ever again. You are a disgrace of a son. I gave you a fort in the south, and you reduced it to rubble. I gave you a smaller fortress in the city, thinking Castra Luna was too big for you. You turned even this garrison into a hive of drink and debauchery." He snorted. "You don't care about this place, it is true. You don't care about anything, Leresy, that you can't bed or drink. But I wanted you here for this night. I wanted you to hear this in person. I want you to leave here tonight in shame, knowing what you've done."

  Leresy barked a laugh. Tears streamed down his cheeks.

  "I reduced Castra Luna to ruin?" he shouted and cackled. "It's your daughter Kaelyn who did that! She's the one who flew in with the Resistance. She's the one who slaughtered our men there, who toppled our walls. I defended that fort! I stood in its grand hall, a sword in my hand, and—"

  "You cowered behind women, then fled through the window, leaving Shari to die," Frey said, voice twisted in disgust. "You fought? Did you even draw your sword that night? Have you ever slain an enemy, Leresy, or only run from one? You blame Kaelyn?" The emperor snorted again. "Kaelyn betrayed me, that is true, but she fought well that day. She did not flee from battle. She is a traitor, yes, but strong. She has more of my respect than you do, boy."

  "Kaelyn is a whore!" Leresy screamed hoarsely, face burning. "She gave me this scar on my face! She is a dirty, cowardly dog, and I will kill her—"

  "You will do nothing," Frey said. He reached out his arm, and Shari came to stand at his side, a smirk on her face. "My daughter Shari has proven herself my only worthy child."

  Leresy guffawed. "Shari? She's a freak! She's a monster. Have you seen her wing, Father? I've seen better sails on slavers!"

  "And I've seen slaves with more honor than you," Frey retorted. "You may blame Kaelyn, boy, but Castra Luna was your watch. And you let it fall. Shari, my daughter, will not disappoint me. The Resistance, cowards that they are, toppled the walls of Castra Luna and fled into the forests, knowing they could never defend the fort. I am giving Shari command of those ruins now. She will rebuild Castra Luna in my honor, and she will rule it well. It will never more fall under her command."

  Leresy stared, his breath dying.

  His lips shook.

  No. Stars, no.

  He let out a raw, anguished howl, reaching his hands to the ceiling.

  "But Castra Luna is mine!" He shook his fists and stamped his feet. "You gave it to me, Father. To me! It was my birthday present!" He panted, frothing at the mouth, and screamed wordlessly. "You can't give it to Shari now. She's only… she's a monster! She—"

  His voice morphed into nothing but a wordless, hoarse howl.

  Frey watched him, eyes hard and cold. Shari stood at his side, her hands on her hips.

  "Are you quite done whining, little brother?" she asked. She gave him a crooked smile and wink. "Don't feel bad. If you're a good little brother, perhaps I'll let you visit and muck out the outhouses." She smirked. "They can call you Leresy, Lord of Latrines!"

  That was enough for Leresy. After all this night had brought him, that was enough. That made him snap.

  He yowled. He reached for his sword a third time, again found it missing, and screamed. Then he remembered. His dagger! Of course! The dagger in his boot!

  Cackling, tears and mucus and drool mingling on his face, he reached into his boot, drew the blade, and ran toward his sister. He screamed, dagger flashing in hand.

  "Now you die, Shari!" he cried, laughing and crying. "Die, Blue Bitch! Die!"

  He leaped and thrust his dagger.

  She sidestepped, and the blade sliced the air.

  He kept flying forward, tumbled, and crashed facedown onto the floor. His dagger clattered away across the mosaic.

  Hands grabbed his collar. His tunic pulled back, choking him. The hands yanked him to his feet.

  Frey Cadigus, Emperor of Requiem, began dragging his son toward the doors.

  Leresy struggled. He mewled. He kicked. But he could not free himself. His father dragged him across the hall, between the columns and statues, over the mosaics, and under the painted ceiling. When they reached the doors, Frey tossed his son outside the palace like an innkeeper tossing out a rowdy barfly.

  Leresy slammed against the stairs that led down into the night. He turned back toward his father, covered his face with his arms, and whimpered.

  "Father!" he said.

  Frey spat upon him, standing tall in the doorway, framed in the light of braziers. Shari stood behind him, her hands still on her hips, a sneer still on her lips.

  "You have shamed me, Leresy," the emperor said. "You are henceforth banished from my court. You are henceforth banished from my city. You are no longer my son." He spat again. "Leave this city. You have one hour. If I see you again, Leresy, you will receive no such mercy. If I see you again, I will break you, hang your mangled body from this palace, and let the empire see your shame. Be gone!"

  Leresy hissed and snapped his teeth.

  "You will regret this, Father!" he screamed. He pointed a shaky finger. "You will regret this, Shari! I will slay you both. I will butcher you like the pigs that you are, and I will hang you here by your entrails."

  With that, he stumbled down the stairs and nearly fell. He shifted into a dragon. He roared. He flew through the night. He sprayed his fire across the city; it fell in a rain of sparks.

  "I am Leresy Cadigus!" he shouted as he flew, laughing and beating his wings. His fire rained and ignited roofs below. "I am Prince of Requiem. The throne will be mine—mine!"

  Roaring, he dived toward his fortress, the slim tower of Castellum Tal. He slammed into the front doors in dragon form, shattering them, and rolled into the hall. He spread his wings wide and howled, and his dragon's roar echoed. All around, his drunken men fell, fled, or cheered.

  "We fly out, men!" Leresy shouted. He whipped his tail, knocking over a table and shattering its mugs of ale. "We fly—now! Follow me and you will have all the ale, women, and gold in Requiem. We fly!"

  His thousand men cheered in a drunken stupor, waving mugs, jugs, and swords.

  Leresy spun around in the hall, his wings and tail knocking over more tables, and lumbered outside into the night.

  "Follow!" he shouted over his shoulder. "Bring the wine with you, and bring the women. We fly!"

  He soared. Behind him, his cheering men emerged from the hall, shifted into dragons, and flew after him. They rose in the night, a thousand drunken dragons blowing fire. Their flames lit the darkness.

  Lord of Latrines? Leresy snorted a laugh. He would make her into a latrine! When he ruled the throne, he would chain Shari beneath the sewers and let the city piss on her. He laughed, imagining it.

  Nova Vita sprawled below him. He flew, howling and laughing. He streamed over the walls, and his thousand dragons flew behind him, chanting his name.

  They will be my army, Leresy vowed. I will give them ale, women, and drunken songs. And they will give me a throne.

  They flew over the forests, leaving the capital behind. The night wrapped around them, cold and black like the memory of Nairi's death.

  ERRY

  A lone copper dragon, she flew over the forests toward her darkest nightmare.

  "Oh, griffin puke," she cursed, wings flapping. Her heart thrashed against her ribs, and she blasted nervous fire. "Damn bloody piss soup. Damn the stars and damn the Abyss and damn Frey Cadigus's hairy arse!"

  She snorted smoke from her nostrils. Her wings ached. Every fiber in her body screamed at her to turn tail, to fly back north, to flee the damn south and the memories that pulsed here.

  "And damn you, Tilla Roper," Erry hissed. "Damn your long bones."

  She flew on, grumbling and cursing and panting.

  The forest rolled beneath her for leagues, its oaks, pines, and maples turning red and yellow with autumn. The colors reminded Erry of blood and fire. Last winter, it was
blood and fire that painted these trees. Today autumn's beauty only chilled her.

  The old pain dug through her. The wound on her temple had healed, and even the headaches had been receding, but now it blazed with new agony. A resistor had given her that blow, slamming his tail into her head. Worse than the physical pain were the memories.

  As she flew, Erry saw the battle again before her. Cannonballs slammed into dragons, tearing their magic away, scattering their human forms in a shower of blood and limbs. Soldiers lay burning upon the trees, some dead, others still screaming in the inferno. And she saw Mae Baker—her dearest friend, her silly and terrified Wobble Lips—disappearing into a rain of fire.

  "Wobble Lips!" Erry had screamed and tried to find her, streaming through smoke and flame. "Mae! Mae, where are you?"

  She never saw the timid baker's daughter again. Erry had fled north with the emperor, the prince and princess, and Tilla. She had fled the fire, the blood, the swarm of the Resistance.

  "I left you, Mae," Erry whispered as she flew back south, back toward that old nightmare. Tears stung her eyes. "I left you to die. I'm so sorry. But I will find you again. I will find you alive, or I will find your grave, but I will find you."

  She flew on, a single copper dragon in an endless sky of memory.

  Finally she saw it ahead, a stain upon the forest, a pile of stone and ash like a crater.

  The ruins of Castra Luna.

  "Maggoty fish guts," Erry whispered, and her throat constricted. She had promised herself she wouldn't cry—she had shed enough tears during the lonely nights these past few moons—but her eyes stung anew.

  Serving in a northern fortress, Erry had heard news of her old training outpost. They said that after conquering Luna, the Resistance had ravaged and abandoned the fort, knowing they could never defend it. Erry had imagined ruins like those from the Griffin War a thousand years ago—orphaned archways, crumbling towers, walls pocked with holes, a fortress that could be patched up with good masonry and elbow grease. Yet Castra Luna… for a moment, Erry wasn't sure she even flew to the right place. Nothing remained here. Not walls, not the shells of towers, nothing but bricks and ash strewn across a clearing.

  "The Resistance took apart every damn brick," she said to herself. "Nothing is left. Nothing. Oh stars, Mae."

  When she flew closer, she saw that hundreds of soldiers were bustling across the ruins like ants over a smashed hive. Dragons were tugging carts full of crumbled bricks, digging foundations, and clearing rubble. Men were building scaffolding of wood and rope. Outside the ruins, a thousand troops or more drilled in a forest clearing, marching between tents.

  Erry swallowed a lump in her throat.

  Castra Luna. The fort where she had trained for three moons. The fort where she had met her two best—her two only friends: Tilla Roper and Mae Baker.

  "I miss you."

  Growing up in Cadport, Erry had never had friends. How could she? She was the bastard of a foreign sailor from Tiranor and a Vir Requis prostitute. Her father had never returned to Requiem. Her mother had died many years ago.

  The other children of Cadport had grown up in homes, sheltered, warm, and protected. Erry had survived alone on the docks. She lived with feral cats and stray dogs. She ate whatever washed up onto the shore and whatever she could steal. She shivered at night in abandoned hovels. She begged, she stole, and sometimes—she cursed to remember it—she bedded men for a warm meal or a roof on a stormy night. Her only friends were the animals she shared the docks with. She often went moons without talking, only growling and barking and hissing among the strays.

  And then… then the blessed day came.

  Then she turned eighteen, and she was drafted into the Legions.

  They had given her boots—real boots of leather! After years of wandering the boardwalk barefoot, the boots felt like slippers for a princess. And they gave her food—real food! The other recruits would complain about the stale wafers and dried meat, but to Erry—whose meals had often been scavenged from trash—it tasted like a feast.

  And best of all… I had friends.

  Flying toward the ruins, Erry blinked tears from her eyes. For three moons, she had shared a tent with Tilla, Mae, and many other girls. For the first time, Erry had felt like she belonged. In the Legions, she was no half-breed dock rat. She was a soldier, same as the others. She did not sleep among stray cats and dogs on the beach, but beside friends. Beside Tilla and Mae.

  "And now you're gone, Mae," she whispered. "But I will find you, Tilla. And I will serve with you again."

  She looked down, blinking her damp eyes, and a gasp fled her maw. She squinted and flew lower.

  Could it be…?

  Yes. Erry felt her throat tighten. Just north of the ruins, a cemetery sprawled between the trees. At first she had thought that thousands of bricks lay strewn through the forest, cast from the ruined fort. Then she realized these were craggy tombstones.

  Erry pulled her wings close and dived down.

  She crashed through the treetops, landed on the forest floor, and shifted into human form.

  "Oh bloody stars," she whispered.

  The tombstones rolled around her, carved from the old bricks of Castra Luna. Thousands spread between the trees. Those trees creaked in the wind, and their leaves rustled, a whisper of ghosts. Erry shivered and hugged herself. Even in steel armor, a sword at her side, she felt as fragile and afraid as she had upon the docks.

  She began walking between the graves, her boots crunching fallen leaves. Most tombstones bore no names; they were simply engraved with a single birch leaf, an ancient symbol of Requiem.

  Erry tilted her head.

  "The Regime engraves the spiral upon its graves," she whispered. "The birch leaf is an older symbol. The Resistance dug these graves."

  She had not imagined the Resistance would bury the dead. She had always heard that they merely burned corpses, left them to rot, or even ate them. Yet somebody had dug these graves here, raised these tombstones, and engraved each one with a symbol of Old Requiem.

  As she kept wandering through the forest, Erry saw that several scattered tombstones did bear names. She recognized some; here lay the fallen youths of Cadport.

  Rune must have buried them, Erry realized. He's from Cadport too. He'd know some of those he slew.

  She sighed and lowered her head. Back at Cadport, Rune Brewer had always been kind to her. He would bring her food to the beach sometimes. Once he even let her sleep in his tavern during a storm. Yet now the boy had become a resistor. Now he had slain hundreds; burying those he slew could not atone for that.

  "In only a year, so much changed," Erry whispered. "Two kids from the boardwalk, one now a soldier, one a resistor. And so many dead."

  She kept wandering, reading the names of the fallen, until she saw a tall tombstone upon a knoll.

  Erry froze and stared.

  A ray of light fell between the trees, lighting the tombstone. Ivy crawled over its craggy white surface, and cyclamens circled its base. The trees rustled, whispering to her. This grave seemed to beckon, and Erry approached it gingerly, holding her breath.

  When she saw the name upon the tombstone, she lowered her head, and a tear flowed down her cheek.

  "Mae Baker," she whispered.

  She looked at her friend's grave and clenched her fists.

  "Oh damn it, Wobble Lips!" she blurted out. "Why did you have to go and get killed, damn you? I told you to fly near me." Her fists shook, and she wanted to punch the tombstone. "I told you a million times—in assault formation, look ahead and blow fire, not at enemies beside you." She kicked the earth, sending leaves flying onto the grave. "Now look at you. Now look at you, Wobble Lips! At least I'm spared seeing your damn lips wobble so much. At least you won't bug me again with all your wailing and tears."

  She closed her burning eyes and stood for long moments, fists clenched. Finally she sighed, opened her eyes, and touched the tombstone.

  "Wherever you are now, Wobble
Lips, just… don't get into any more trouble, all right? Not until I see you again. And for stars' sake, don't cry so much, okay? Be strong. We all have to be strong." Her knees trembled and she knuckled her eyes. "We're going to be so damn strong, Mae, you won't believe it." She patted the tombstone. "Goodbye, Wobble Lips. Goodbye."

  She turned and left.

  She walked through the forest, head low.

  Soon she found a gravelly road. As she walked between the trees, heading toward the ruins of Castra Luna, she unrolled the scroll she had carried all the way from her northern fort. She clutched it like a treasure.

  It had taken her moons to convince her officer to write this scroll, reassigning her here. At first, Erry had agreed to do anything for reassignment. And so she had spent a moon serving her officer as a slave—scrubbing his boots, sweeping his floor, oiling his sword, polishing his armor, and begging again and again for naught. She had then changed her approach. She spent the next moon wreaking havoc in her phalanx—knocking over pots, breaking three swords, crashing into other dragons in flight, and being the worst soldier she could be. She had suffered many punisher burns during that moon, but it was worth it. Finally, after Erry had lost yet another helmet, her commander agreed to send her south.

  "Remember," Erry had said, rubbing the bruises of his punisher, "I want to serve in Castra Luna, and I want to serve under Lanse Tilla. Remember that—it has to be Lanse Tilla."

  Her officer had scowled, cursed… and written the scroll.

  "Soon I'll see you again, Tilla," Erry whispered as she walked down the gravel road.

  All my life, she thought, I've had only two real friends. One now lies buried. The other is an officer leading her own phalanx. Erry took a deep breath. I might still be a lowly periva and Tilla a lofty lanse. And I might have to serve under her command, rather than fight at her side. But I can be near her again. I can be with my friend.

  She knuckled her eyes, kept walking down the road, and soon reached the ruins of Castra Luna.